GARY’S BIOGRAPHY
Has anyone ever turned to you an ask you to describe yourself in five words? For some it may be easy and for others impossible. But I took the challenge and answered Ambitious, Thoughtful, Dreamer, Friendly, and Considerate. And then I stopped to think that a person is more than five words, and although those may be some good or bad traits it is only a small glimpse into the person, I started off as, and later became. My life was totally unconventional, and I guess my first trait might capture that as nothing was going to stop me from trying. Ambitious, I wanted to succeed, and yet I had several talents and interest and as early as twelve years old when I started a recording studio and turned it into a business one year after Berry Gordy incorporated Motown in 1959. And a year later I formed Pioneer Recording with Eli Scherr and Craig Carnick, which later became a record company and where fellow high school kids were forming bands and performing at local clubs, and Barbara Streisand was getting her professional start at the Caucus Club in the Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit. And across the Ocean, the European invasion started and groups like the Beatles, Dave Clark five, Jerry and The Pacemakers, started an explosion of new talented groups and uprising was about to begin in the United States. And they all needed a place to record, and I wanted Pioneer to be that place. Early on I meet Pete Cantini who had a club in Southfield Michigan called the Raven where he became famous for promoting the Folk Scene with Joanie Mitchel, The Smother Brothers, and locals like The Spike Drivers.
I decided to hold open Auditions at my studio, and go into the record business. Shelia Fantish whose uncle ran Motown, and Glen Frey, who later became the lead singer and guitar player for The Eagles, both with a dream to become famous. And a friend by the name of Howard Friedman wrote a song he wanted to have recorded, so I put a session together as they recorded a record for the first time. So that was part of the beginning of Pioneer going into the record business. It was their dreams and mine and so many others that made me take the journey I did. Later meeting and working with Sammy Davis Junior, Don Davis, Brenda Lee, and Diana Ross and the Supremes at the Roostertail Night Club and hundreds others as they searched for success. By 1964 I had opened the first four track open recording studio in Michigan on James Cousins Highway.
And being the Record Capitol of the world, it brought corruption, as payola, drugs, sex and violence became a part of the record world. And music was almost a part of everyone’s life. Concerts halls, and clubs opened throughout the state and every type of music from church choirs, country and western, Jazz, and now Motown were filling up the airways, and the record racks, and everyone was listening to music at home or on the radio, or at live performances. And I was about to make many people’s dreams come true and take you on my journey and experience what it was like over sixty-two years ago to live in Detroit, through it’s amazing growth after World War II and the home and birthplace of so many future stars and relive their success, failures and struggles and overcoming challenges to reach some new heights. The home to Madonna, Bob Seger, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, M & M, Sonny Bono, and Sixto Diaz Rodriquez about fourteen and unknown and hanging out with Michael Coffee often at our studio would be discovered in Africa where he would sell out 60,000 seat stadiums, and be featured on Sixty Minutes on October 7, 2020. Almost sixty years to realize his dream.
And the best part of living a dream is to share it and for the past fifty years I got to share my dream with Suzy Kahl, and we were married nine months later.